This is been a real interesting weekend in news from Iraq. Not only have we lost 16 soldiers since Friday, but there has been a lot of back and forth regarding the “progress” of the surge. Here is what today’s New York Times is reporting:

Three months after the start of the Baghdad security plan that has added thousands of American and Iraqi troops to the capital, they control fewer than one-third of the city’s neighborhoods, far short of the initial goal for the operation, according to some commanders and an internal military assessment.

The American assessment, completed in late May, found that American and Iraqi forces were able to “protect the population” and “maintain physical influence over” only 146 of the 457 Baghdad neighborhoods.

In the remaining 311 neighborhoods, troops have either not begun operations aimed at rooting out insurgents or still face “resistance,” according to the one-page assessment, which was provided to The New York Times and summarized reports from brigade and battalion commanders in Baghdad.

Considering Petraeus was before Congress a few short weeks ago praising the surge, this really lends credibility to what Murtha told George Stephanopoulos this weekend:

On ABC’s This Week today, host George Stephanopoulos asked Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) about whether Congress would “move again to get a timetable for withdrawal in September if the benchmarks aren’t met, even if General Petraeus…comes to Congress in September and says he needs more time.” “He has an awful lot of credibility,” he added.

Murtha quickly disputed Stephanopoulos’s premise. “George, let me tell you, I’ve lost a lot of confidence in many of the military leaders. Because they say what the White house wants them to say,” said Murtha. Asked if he included Petraeus in his lack of confidence, Murtha added, “I’m waiting to see what he has to say. But I am absolutely convinced there has been this overly optimistic picture of what’s going on in Iraq, while the figures show the opposite.”

(Think Progress has the video)

It does sound more and more like Petraeus was not very truthful with the Congress, and instead just wanted to continue to fund Bush’s war. Of course this could have just been a mistake on Petraeus’ part. Or could it be part of something else?

On Friday, ABC had a story posted on their website saying that Petraeus was already planning on going to Congress in September and telling them the surge has been a success. Even more disturbing is the fact that he is going to laud the fact that he is planning on reducing the number of U.S. forces in Iraq to 130,000 by the end of 2008. So this “success” is rewarding by returning our troop levels when Bush leaves office, to those from the beginning of this year.

The most interesting part is that this story on ABC’s website mysteriously disappeared late Friday night. AmericaBLOG has the full story on their site. There was no explanation for the disappearance, it just happened to be gone. Now this leaves me wondering why. Was this story pulled because it severely contradicts the NYT’s story planned for Monday, or (and more likely) was it pulled because it would really reaffirm the criticism that Murtha was going to voice on their own network? Which ever answer it is, continues the exposure of a serious problem in our media.. This, after all, is the same media that helped promote the propaganda that lead us into this war to begin with.